~ politics for the people

Liam Fox’s speech admits Tory failure: Developing countries are now better-placed to succeed than the UK

I know this old Times cartoon is not strictly accurate to the situation – Liam Fox was giving a conference speech, not speaking in the Commons – but his career really has taken on the quality described on the cover of the book featured here.

Research tends to suggest that while trade does indeed reduce poverty, it can only do so effectively where there a number of pre-existing conditions. These are; high levels of education, developed financial sectors, and, hugely importantly, good governance and minimal corruption.

Did anybody else’s jaw hit the floor (feel free to insert your own personal expression of shock) when Liam Fox had the bare-faced cheek to say this in his speech today (October 3, 2016)?

While the UK may be said still to have a developed (perhaps over-developed) financial sector, we’re in deep trouble with the other two.

Conservative policy is to ruin the state-run education system, to ensure that the plebs don’t get uppity and think they can run run anything better than the privileged. Hence Free Schools, the increase in academies, and now the plan to bring back grammar schools. All intended to drain funds and expertise away from your school, or your child’s school.

And, if you hadn’t noticed, poor governance and massive corruption was exactly what caused the global financial crisis in 2008. The Tories had deregulated banking in the 1980s, under Margaret Thatcher, and the bankers had been able to do whatever they wanted for 20 years. They ended up gambling away all our money.

I believe I heard a snatch of Philip Hammond’s speech on the radio, in which he said ordinary households had been working hard to balance the UK’s debts, and that’s right – we have, even though we did not incur those debts. The bankers and financiers who did have carried right on with their gambling.

Mr Fox continued:

In a classical Adam Smith analysis, these factors would enable an economy to reallocate resources effectively and the good news is that there are many more developing countries that satisfy the tests.

That might be true of developing countries but, under a Conservative government, it will never be true of the United Kingdom.

5 thoughts on “Liam Fox’s speech admits Tory failure: Developing countries are now better-placed to succeed than the UK”

Well of course it is easy to blame the Thatcher government for deregulation, but as a member of the eu the permission, and legal possibility, for us and the rest of the eu nations to de regulate banking came from brussels. The reason we had the banking sector is because when the different sectors were shared out by the eu it is the one we got, whereas nations like France and Germany got the heavy industries.

The EU didn’t exist at the time. This was in the late 1980s when it was the European Economic Community.
Thatcher did it of her own accord, in order to increase competitiveness because the UK financial sector was falling behind New York and was in danger of becoming even less competitive.

Our developed financial sector is corporate owned and as such very little filters down the ladder and the government will not invest in developing small, medium and large non-corporate business. Our schools are under funded and are failing and good governance ended about twenty years ago with corruption replacing it to monumental levels. Is Liam Fox living on the same planet, let alone in the UK?

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